Daniel Barth, Nicholas W. Papageorge, Kevin Thom
Journal of Political Economy, 2020, vol. 128, No.4
Barth, Papageorge, and Thom (2020)
Twin studies
Genome wide association studies (GWASs)
Regress outcome \(Y_{i}\) on each SNP using \(J\) estimating equations:
\[ Y_{i}=\bfmu'\bfx_{i}+\beta_{j}SNP_{ij}+\epsilon_{ij}, \quad j=1,\dots,J. \]
Polygenic score of \(i\) for the outcome \(Y\) = “Educational attainment (EA) score”
\[ PGS_{i}=\sum_{j=1}^{J}\tilde{\beta} SNP_{ij} \]
Use Bayesian LDpred procedure to correct for correlations in \(\tilde{\beta}_{j}\)
Use all SNPs: Better out-of-sample results than using only SNPs with genome-wide significance \(p\) value \(< 5*10^{-8} =\) .0000005%
PGS is considered to be a predictor of individual fixed effects
Health and retirement survey: Age > 50 + partners, genetic samples 2006, 2008
2590 HHs, 5701 HH-year observations (Table 1)